Shadow People

by Bevill, C. L.

  Food first. She exited I-30 and headed toward an industrial area of Arlington. She knew a good café there that catered to truckers and served the best apple pie in the metroplex. No one would look at her twice, and the waitress was surly enough not to say a single word during the entire serving process.

  It was only after she pulled into the oversized parking lot of the Eat-‘Em-Up Café that Penelope paid any attention to the setting sun. It had dropped behind the horizon of buildings that were the downtown sector of the city, and judging from the dimming light it looked as if it had finally set. Penelope realized she had been on the longest job time in her short career as a creeper. It had lasted just about twenty-four hours.

  When she went inside the café, Penelope’s favorite churlish waitress directed her to a booth and served her coffee without asking. The waitress, who was named Iola, and who looked to be a well-preserved fifty, was short and perpetually cranky.

  The Eat-‘Em-Up was mostly empty. They did more business in the daytime hours than in the night, but they kept the place open 24/7 because of the endless arrival and departure of commercial vehicles into the area.

  Penelope sat in a rear booth with her back to a wall that had a framed and yellowing Norman Rockwell print on it. She kept a cautious eye on the door. Her nerves were on edge, and she almost expected either the police or a large man-shaped thing in a colorful mask to enter the café looking for her, certain of her presence there. Neither expectation made her feel any better.

  When Iola returned, a sneer on her upper lip that would have made Billy Idol jealous, Penelope ordered a full stack of pancakes. Two eggs, two pieces of bacon, and two pieces of toast came on the side of the pancakes. Iola took the order without comment.

  Then Iola spoke. In years of coming to the Eat-‘Em-Up, Penelope had never heard her voice before, and she was mildly surprised at the high-pitched tones coming out of the compact woman. “You look tired, kid,” she said frankly.

  Penelope’s head came up, and she studied Iola’s face. Suddenly Iola didn’t look so cranky. On the contrary, she appeared concerned, albeit in a snotty sort of way, as if a loyal customer might suddenly drop dead, and the good tips would be abruptly discontinued. “I am tired,” Penelope answered. “Long day.”

  “Get some more rest, kid,” Iola advised gravely. “Won’t be long before you’re my age, and sleep will be fleeting.” Then she turned away, the coffee pot still in her capable hand.

  Penelope thought of Jessica Quick because Iola kind of looked at Penelope in a motherly way. She pulled out Jeremy’s cell phone and dialed her mother’s number. She didn’t get an answer, but it didn’t bother Penelope particularly. Jessica liked to stay busy, and the place where she lived had an abundance of activities for its residents. She was either listening to a movie or doing some kind of class. She disconnected just as Iola delivered two plates of food.

  Penelope made eye contact with Iola, but she no longer saw a cranky, overworked waitress who glared and sighed impatiently while waiting on an order. She saw a normal working woman who wasn’t the unevenly chiseled piece of ice that she previously thought. Compared to the people she had been introduced to in the previous evening, Iola seemed distinctly human, and the thought was making Penelope twitch with uneasiness.

  Reaching for maple syrup, she poured it on like the pancakes were the cliffs and the syrup were Niagara Falls. Iola didn’t say anything but looked down at the younger woman with a pinched expression on her face. After a moment she turned away.

  When Penelope was stuffed with the pancakes, half the eggs, both pieces of bacon, and none of the toast, she pushed the plates away and sipped at her coffee. She had a longing to sit in this café for the rest of the night. The lights were bright here. The parking lot was illuminated like DFW Airport’s landing strips. No harm could befall anyone while they stayed here. But once she stepped into the darkness…

  Penelope pulled out a twenty dollar bill and left it under the coffee cup. She left without saying anything else to Iola and knew the woman was staring at her as she departed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Saturday, July 5th

  Ratface (slang, origin unknown, probably American 1930s) - a person who is sly and untrustworthy

  The Dallas Police Department arrived at the door of Number 26 Durfrene Row not once but three times on Saturday. The first time there was no answer, and a quick patrol of the house revealed that there were no broken windows or obvious signs of a burglary. There was also no sign of the black Chevy Suburban that had been involved in an accident on the Houston Street Viaduct the night before. Several witnesses had dutifully taken down the license plate even before the driver had vanished. Just as a tow driver was about to hook up to the Suburban roughly thirty minutes after the accident, someone got in and drove off, taking the tow truck’s chain and fixtures with it. There was no description of the auto thief.

  Consequently, Detective Sergeant Alan Harcourt had showed up on the doorstep of the Durfrene Row house at 6 AM, 10 AM, and finally again at 8 PM. He was armed with the knowledge that the anonymous cell phone call the previous evening had specified the Victorian Gothic house as the target of a Caucasian female burglar who had headed toward the Trinity Fest after breaking and entering the home. Furthermore, it was quickly ascertained that the Suburban was registered to the same holding company that owned the house. It wasn’t exactly a major breakthrough, but Harcourt was wondering if the car’s wreck on the viaduct had any connection to the assault on Officer McAdams on the DART train the previous evening.

  Harcourt was a man in his early forties, with nearly twenty years on the Dallas police force. He thought that he had seen it all. After all, nineteen years and three months was a long time as a police officer, and God alone knew the weirdness that took place in the metroplex. “Only in Texas,” he often muttered.

  But the preceding evening had hit an all-time new record of strange reports. Black-dressed things with glowing red eyes were Harcourt’s favorite sighting, which included the tow truck driver’s confused account. Additionally, there had been two statements of a deformed giant wearing a black robe and some kind of odd mask that looked like something out of the Four Corners region. Then there was the beautiful woman with long black hair who glided down the street like a wraith, but when she looked at you, your insides turned to ice. More than six people had reported her, and they weren’t exactly sure why they had done so. Apparently she had made people nervous. And did he need to throw in the account from one Dr. Harry Shorely, M.D., about the girl jumping off the Houston Street Viaduct about the time the fireworks ended? Right about the same place where the train had stopped and where McAdams had been attacked?

  “Jesus Christ,” Harcourt mumbled to himself on the third visit to the Durfrene Row house.

  Besides all the reports of July 4th madness there was the statement that someone had taken around midnight from the CEO of Pictograph Inc., which was the holding company that owned both the house and the Chevy. He had reported that particular Suburban stolen. Since he and his employees had left it parked at 26 Durfrene Row all day on the fourth, one might even surmise that the absent thief had been the perpetrator of that exact crime.

  One might, but not Harcourt. Oh, it was logical to assume that a burglar might be interested in an expensive SUV. In reality she could have driven it to where it had wrecked and then run for the train that had stopped mid-bridge. However, the anonymous caller on the cell phone reported her running willy-nilly toward the DART station. Running, not driving off in the Chevy. And then there had been the university students claiming that the blonde in black had been practically chased onto the DART car by more people all in black and with red eyes. Oh, yeah, then there were all the people on the train with the guys in black, the girl in black, and Officer McAdams, when McAdams had his face radically introduced to the glass doors.

  Harcourt frowned. No one wanted to hear about a brother cop getting injured. And McAdams was a big, muscle-bound guy who knew how to
take care of himself. McAdams was the kind of person who wouldn’t take unnecessary chances if he hadn’t thought he needed to take them. The unnecessary chance was the firing of his service pistol in the crowded area of the DART car. He hadn’t hit any civilians, but only McAdams knew what he had been thinking, taking a risk like that in such a small, confined area with so many people around. Nevertheless, the officer had emptied his service pistol, and apparently hadn’t hit a damned thing.

  People with red glowing eyes. Giants with masks. Thieves taking a dive off the bridge to get away? Harcourt frowned harder. He was having a hard time imagining who was going to eventually answer the door. The recorded number at Pictograph, Inc. didn’t answer and didn’t have a service to take down a message. The only address listed there was this house.

  So when the man with the long black hair and the handsome face answered, Harcourt was somewhat taken aback. The fact that anyone at all responded was part of the surprise. The other part of the surprise was that someone who appeared so relatively normal had come to the door. Harcourt flashed his badge and identified himself. Then he waited for the other man to do so, but the man merely stared at him with no little amount of wry amusement.

  “You reported your car stolen last night?” Harcourt persisted. About an inch or two under six feet, the guy was about thirty years old and looked like he could take on a team of lawyers for breakfast. Neat and unperturbed, he wore a white dress shirt tucked into black jeans, with a large turquoise bolo knotted around his neck. The guy looked Hispanic and then Harcourt abruptly changed his mind. Not Hispanic. Not that at all. No, he looks like a Native American.

  The image Harcourt had conceived of in his mind of the Goliath with the camouflage headgear popped into his head. The words of the twenty-three-year-old named Antoine Baker came back to him. The rest of his crew hadn’t wanted to go to the police, but Antoine had felt something was very wrong with the cute blonde chick that had been running away from some badass individuals when she had barreled into them around 9:30. Antoine and his buddies had been taking a shortcut to some of the bars from the Trinity Fest. There, they had run into the blonde dressed all in black just like someone robbing a bank, or rather she had run into them. She had been closely followed by the others, including a really big, messed-up dude wearing a black robe and a large mask that, and here was where Harcourt quoted Antoine, “Like something Indian.”

  Something Indian. Pictograph, Inc. And this man, the one who had finally answered the door. A man who is obviously Native American.

  Then he spoke, and his voice was a basic American voice, deep and well-modulated. Confident in his delivery, he said, “That’s correct, detective.”

  “And your name is?”

  “Anthony Littlesoldier,” the man answered and showed a mouthful of white teeth. Although he was smiling, he didn’t appear particularly happy, merely cautiously observant of the detective on his doorstep and somewhat titillated by the situation.

  Anthony looked at the detective and was sincerely glad that the seatco and the witch had left the house not twenty minutes before. Once dark had fallen, the seatco had been re-introduced to the thief’s blood and was eager to find its way to her. Anthony had another issue to deal with, but he knew the pair would do their jobs in a faithful manner.

  “And you’re the CEO of Pictograph, Inc?” Harcourt persevered.

  “That’s also correct,” Anthony confirmed easily.

  “There was a report of this house being burglarized last night,” Harcourt said.

  Anthony laughed. “I doubt that. There’s nothing to steal.” Then he smiled easily again. “Why don’t you come inside and look around? We’re still in the very early stages of renovation. As a matter of fact, we’ve hardly started.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Harcourt said and stepped inside the house.

  *

  Like Jeremy, Penelope had chosen a renovated home from the fifties to live in. Not far from downtown Arlington, it had the auspiciousness to be centrally located and not far from the intersections of two major freeways. Although it was small, it was convenient, and it was off the beaten track enough so that she wouldn’t stand out. It was also cheap.

  She had one room and one bathroom all to herself. The landlord called it a studio, but Penelope called it her personal dive. It perpetually smelled like the walls were rotting because of periodic water leaks, and the hallway sometimes had mysterious pools of liquid in the corner that Penelope attributed to people not being able to make it to their own toilets.

  It was a dive. Those were the good parts, but there were other perks. The landlord didn’t ask questions about when Penelope came and went and didn’t care that she put extra locks on her door. For an extra fifty bucks a month, he would even pretend that she was a college student. And the landlord, a closemouthed individual named Sammy, would lie to anyone who came asking. It didn’t matter if it was the FBI or a local mobster. Sammy was committed to his regular income, not to mention that he didn’t care much for the government.

  The downside was that she couldn’t keep anything valuable there. She didn’t dare leave anything there that she would miss. There was a specific reason that she kept a knife and a can of mace under her pillow and used the place to sleep and bathe. She couldn’t even park her car in front of the transformed house. Parking was limited and usually full by the time Penelope wandered home. So she paid another hundred bucks a month to use a nearby car park.

  Penelope drove the Jetta past the house once and warily scanned the neighborhood. There was an old Caddy up on car jacks smack dab in front of the house. It belonged to Sammy’s son, Rob, and had been in residence for some six months. The remainder of the parking spaces were taken up by working class vehicles. There were battered trucks, old sedans needing paint jobs, and a few newer cars that were the cheapest available on the market.

  Students, divorced men, and single mothers lived in the house. Penelope didn’t stand out, and she didn’t mind that in the least. These were people who had a bare existence and were looking for something better.

  Cruising slowly past the house in the VW, she decided that nothing seemed to be out of place. There were no large black Chevy Suburbans parked on the corner, loaded for bear, and ready to hit while the gridiron was hot. No one was lounging or even lurking on the sagging front porch that had last been painted when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. The street lights were on and showing only yellow puddles of pothole ridden asphalt instead of someone lingering in the dimness.

  Nothing. Nobody. Nada. That was good. Penelope almost smiled. She was going to put the Jetta in the car park, then she was going to walk to her place, checking behind each bush on the way, and then she was going to take that second long shower.

  The car park attendant waved at her as she went through the gates. He pointed upward to indicate that the only spaces left were on the upper levels, and Penelope almost winced. The lighting on the upper levels was much worse than on the bottom one. For some reason the owners of the car park thought that security was only an issue on the first floor. This was despite the fact that there was a backstairs with the dock lock broken half the time.

  As it was, she ended up on the third floor. Someone had damaged one of the beams on the second floor, and half the floor was closed due to reconstruction efforts. The third floor was half full, and she saw many of the cars there that the people in the neighborhood didn’t want the common criminals to see. Beamers sat next to Mercedes and Lexus.

  Penelope didn’t really care much. She wanted that shower too badly, and she could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Parking the car under one of the only lights on the level, she carefully scrutinized the area before exiting and locking the car up behind her. She peered inside to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, and when she stepped back, she ran into a very solid form.

  *

  Will counted himself lucky that the car rental agency included a GPS in the Lexus’ accoutrements.

  It w
as a safe bet that was where the thief was headed. She disappeared from his sight right around the exits for Grand Prairie, and Arlington was only a few miles after that. She could have easily gotten off the freeway in a direct route to her home. After all, she had no reason to suspect that anyone had seen her car and was waiting for her. There had been dozens of cars left parked in downtown Dallas, the result of unruly celebrations and those who had wisely taken cabs home or caught rides with less inebriated cohorts.

  A reasonable expectation. How had Will known it was the thief’s car? Besides the insignificant contents, he had known. He had simply known. Whether she would come back to fetch it was another question and one that he could not have predicted the answer to, but she had returned and now he’d lost her again. The line of thought brought him to another practical question. Would a thief return for a stolen vehicle? Would a thief cover up a stolen car’s license plates with more stolen license plates? He didn’t think so. It was her possession.

  A brief stop at a 7-Eleven allowed him to find the address of one Penelope Quick on the GPS. It wasn’t far away from his position. He simply pulled out of the convenience store and made three turns before reaching the street upon which she lived.

  Penelope. Will valued the name from his advanced studies of various cultures. It was Greek for the weaver. In Greek mythology Penelope had been Odysseus’s wife and while on his long journey that lasted two decades, she had many suitors eager to take over his beautiful wife and wealthy kingdom. Waiting dutifully for her husband, Penelope put off her suitors by promising them that she would choose one once she had completed the shroud of Laertes. So she weaved during the day, and during the night she unwove what she had accomplished, delaying the choosing of the suitors until her husband returned to her. Penelope was one of the lesser appreciated women of Greek mythology. She had been a strong woman with stanch ethics. Intensely loyal to her family, Penelope would have done almost anything for them.